Job with Japanese

ARMY & NAVY

To the Class of 1915 at the U. S. Naval Academy "Dodo," "Si," "Charlie,"; "Mayevski" and "Johnny" all meant happy-go-lucky, good-natured John Semer Farnsworth of Cincinnati. Appointed on recommendation of Representative Nicholas Longworth, long before that T. R. son-in-law became Speaker of the House, Midshipman Farnsworth won a certain notoriety for his bibulous escapades, was recognized by classmates as an able scholar and tactician. Few years after graduation he took up aviation, studied hard and long, became a Lieutenant Commander in 1925. Two years later his Naval career ended dismally when a court-martial dismissed him from the service for borrowing money from an enlisted man, committing perjury by disclaiming indebtedness.

Last month U. S. newsreaders had their interest in spies aroused when in Los Angeles a onetime Navy yeoman named Harry Thomas Thompson was tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for selling U. S. Fleet secrets to a Japanese agent (TIME, July 6). Last week the name and face of onetime Lieut. Commander John Semer Farnsworth suddenly appeared on the front pages of the nation's Press when the Department of Justice accused him of betraying Naval secrets to Japan.

Bureau of Investigation agents picked up "Dodo" Farnsworth one day last week at the Washington, D. C. home of his divorced wife. Their story was short and simple. The Navy Department first grew suspicious of Farnsworth last year when day after day he kept pestering it for information for "magazine articles," pored over books in the Naval Library. When a high-ranking officer's wife reported that he had urged her to show him certain Naval documents, G-Men joined Naval Intelligence agents in shadowing him. In May 1935, it was charged, he borrowed a U. S. Navy handbook entitled The Service of Information and Security, had it photo-stated, sold the copy to a member of the Japanese Embassy in Washington. This book, first published in 1916 and since revised, was, the Navy Department insisted, exclusively for responsible officers. Divulgence of its contents, officials implied, might necessitate a complete revamping of U. S. Fleet strategy.

To these accusations frightened and fretful "Dodo" Farnsworth first replied: "It's a lot of hooey." So jittery he could barely stand erect, he finally pulled himself together long enough to be arraigned before a U. S. Commissioner and plead "not guilty." Held in the District of Columbia jail on $10,000 bail for a hearing next week, he disclosed his story bit by bit.

As far back as 1932, he asserted, he had begun writing to Government officials of China, Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Russia begging for employment as an aviation instructor. All turned down his services. Last nation he approached was Japan, asking a $50,000 cash advance, a salary as commander in the Japanese Navy. An unidentified Japanese opened negotiations with him, required evidence of his qualifications for the job. From the Navy Department Farnsworth obtained a batch of photographs showing U. S. battleships. Before turning his own copy of the supposedly secret Navy handbook over to the Japanese, Farnsworth said, he had checked it with a more recent edition belonging to a Navy Department friend. He insisted he had never received a cent for any of this material, nor had he obtained the employment he sought. Protested this onetime Naval officer: "Whatever I gave them, it was nothing that could injure the United States. . . . After all I am an American." Four days later he admitted receiving $1,000 for two articles on Naval subjects, neither of which, he insisted, contained U. S. Navy secrets.

Hearing his story, his parents in Norwood, Ohio claimed that their son had been queer ever since an airplane crash in 1922, intimated a plea of insanity for him.

Because the spy game follows a certain international routine, diplomatic Washington and Tokyo both professed blank ignorance of the whole affair. Secretary of State Hull said that all he knew about the matter was what he had read in the newspapers. Purred Navy Minister Osami Nagano in Tokyo: "In America, as in other countries, there are a few worthless individuals who try to obtain money from foreigners for supposedly valuable secret information, but we can't believe any Japanese officer attempted to use such persons."

In Washington some wiseacres wondered whether the Navy Department was not making an extraordinary display of the Farnsworth case in the Press as a warning to other spies that the U. S. is not to be caught napping. But in Japan citizens wondered nothing at all because in not one Japanese newspaper was there so much as a mention of Farnsworth's arrest.

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